Plato and the Virtue of Courage

Chapter One: Courage and the Education in Virtue

two notions of courage Plato’s Laches, which is subtitled, “On Courage,” is his most explicit treatment of courage.1 In the dialogue, two highly esteemed Athenian generals, Laches and Nicias, o=er di=erent definitions of courage. Both men would seem to be experts on the subject. At the time when the action of the dialogue occurs, Nicias is not only a leading Athenian general but perhaps the most powerful man in Athens; he either is about to conclude or has recently concluded a peace treaty with Sparta, albeit a short-lived one, ten years into the Peloponnesian War.2 Laches, Nicias’ fellow general, has by the time of the dialogue ably led the Athenians in several battles (see Thucydides III.90, 99, 103), and he was Nicias’ chief colleague in the negotiations with Sparta leading up to the peace (see Thucydides V.43).3 Their common experience as prominent generals, however, does not lead Laches and Nicias to agree about the meaning of courage. Laches claims that courage is “steadfastness of soul” (192b9), whereas Nicias defines it as “knowledge of the terrible and emboldening things” (195a1).4 It is not only the case, however , that they disagree about courage with each other. Each general in fact turns out to disagree with himself as well; in seeking to defend his initial claims, each winds up contradicting his own account of courage. By bringing to light each man’s inner conflict, Socrates fleshes out the grave tensions at the heart of the ordinary understanding of courage, thereby at the very least preparing the way for e=orts to resolve them. Courage and the Education in Virtue chapter one The conflict over courage between Laches and Nicias—and within each of them—turns in large part on their di=erent views of what makes courage a virtue. Although these are the opinions of only two individuals, they stand for much more than the peculiarities of these two men. In their very extremity, Laches’ and Nicias’ respective opinions about courage reveal the fundamental tensions in our ordinary conception of courage. Laches is most impressed by the courageous man’s capacity to endure pains and fears: an essential toughness or steadfastness is the core of the virtue, according to him. The initial and not wholly misleading impression Laches gives is of a general analogous to George S. Patton. While Laches is a less complicated and forceful figure than Patton, he possesses the kind of admiration for unvarnished guts for which Patton is well known.5 Socrates’ questions to Laches, however, reveal an extreme and troubling position buried in Laches’ view. Socrates eventually gets Laches to agree that the more ignorant or foolish the steadfastness, the more courageous it is. Laches is frustrated by this conclusion but does not see how to avoid it. Nicias, by contrast, takes up what is in e=ect the opposite opinion. Latching on to what he considers the Socratic view of virtue—that it is knowledge (194d)— Nicias argues that the courageous man is distinguished by his prudence. Nicias’ character is thus closer to a Colin Powell, who as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta= devised a test for the use of military force that limits military engagement to those situations in which an overwhelming force can achieve a quick and decisive victory with minimal casualties.6 While such a test might be said to reduce the need for courage by reducing the dangers that soldiers would have to face, Nicias’ concern with prudence is so extreme that he seems to want to eliminate the need for courage altogether. Indeed, when pressed by Socrates, he reveals that he thinks the courageous man is so distinguished by his prudence that he possesses complete knowledge of good and evil and can invariably attain the former and avoid the latter. Like Laches, though, Nicias turns out to be uncomfortable with the extreme version of his view of courage that Socrates compels him to articulate. Nicias draws up short, we shall see, when he realizes that complete knowledge of good and evil is the whole of virtue rather than a part of it; unable to imagine that human beings can possess the complete virtue entailed by his understanding of courage, he is at a loss to explain how they can possess any courage. The chief aim of our inquiry into the Laches will be to understand why Socrates’ two main interlocutors find attractive, but cannot defend, the...